Question

how mitochondria evil of synthesizing their own protein

Answer 1

The most popular evolutionary story to explain how the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA) got mitochondria is that it ate them. Or rather that it ate small non-nucleated cells (prokaryotes, such as bacteria)—and that then those prokaryotesdeveloped a symbiotic relationship with the host cell, supplied it with energy, and turned into mitochondria. That story, popularized in the 1970s by the late Dr. Lynn Margulis, is called the “serial endosymbiosis theory.” Because single-celled organisms and other cells like our white blood cells engulf debris and smaller microorganisms—an observable process called endosymbiosis—the serial endosymbiosis theory for the origin of eukaryotic cells seemed reasonable to evolutionists. After all, they reasoned, mitochondria and prokaryotes have some superficial similarities. Both are small. And while most of a eukaryotic cell’s DNA is in its nucleus, mitochondria have some DNA of their own as well as ribosomes to translate its genes into proteins. Nuclear DNA is in the form of double helical strands, but mitochondrial DNA is not. Though the mitochondrial genome is much smaller than a bacterial genome, both mitochondria and prokaryotes have circular DNA.

Because multicellular organisms are made of eukaryotic cells, many think theevolution of mitochondria was the stepping-stone that fueled multicellular evolution. However, there are a lot of problems with the story of mitochondrial evolution. Therefore, exactly when mitochondria evolved, the fate of the proto-mitochondria’s missing genes, and the identity of their ancestral bacteria have remained controversial.

Ancestry Anonymou